


made for you and me

by queerofcups



Series: love love love (love love) [12]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Coming Out, M/M, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 10:11:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9717410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerofcups/pseuds/queerofcups
Summary: "The question is how do we come out on Valentine’s Day in the least obnoxious way possible?"Dan and Phil make a video. Phil makes a video. Things get better.





	

**Author's Note:**

> what you need to know: In 2011, due to a youtube glitch a valentine’s day video phil made for dan that was private became public. since then it (and its many copies) have been taken down, and they’ve asserted that it was just a prank they decided not to go through with. of course, you can still find references to it, because the internet is forever kids. if you feel weird about me writing about the video, i’d strongly suggest you skipping this fic, because it’s a pretty large element of the fic. cool? cool. 
> 
> this fic is also the sequel to looking like a morning star. this fic will probably make more sense if you read that one but, all you truly need to know about morning star is that it’s about the process of Dan staring to express his femme identity more, from Phil’s perspective and that it’s during the Australian stop of TATINOF that Dan first brings up coming out.

Phil sits in front of his camera. The apartment is quiet, Dan at the dentist yet again. His door is closed, there are no plans for gasmen or their landlord to come in today. He’s as alone as he ever gets. But he still feels more nervous in front of the camera than he’s felt in years.

He ignores the squirming in his stomach and looks into the camera.

“Arf,” he tries, just to see how it feels.

Embarrassment and stress flare up like spikes in his chest, and he’s certain his face is bright red. He shakes his head and gets up, turning the camera off.

\--

“Ok,” Dan says, sitting on the floor, leaning against Phil’s knees. “We’re agreed we want to come out, yes?”

“Yep,” Phil says, staring at the screen. His katamari is almost big enough to pick up children now. He rolls it around, pushing his knee gently against Dan in a hello. He’s been sitting here, playing _Katamari Damacy_ since his failed attempt to film an hour ago. “How was the dentist?”

Dan groans. “My mouth is so sore, it was wonderful.”

Phil grins down at him, “You’re such a freak.”

“You love it,” Dan says absently, turning to look at him fully. “And we want to do it on Valentine’s Day.”

“You want to do it on Valentine’s Day,” Phil mutters. “I’m just along for the ride.”

That part of the conversation followed them all through their trip to Japan and when they’d gone North for Phil’s birthday. Dan thought it had a sort of symbolic quality that was important, showing that they weren’t afraid of the date, and acknowledging the video. It made Phil’s stomach squirm at first and then less, and then less. Eventually he gave up arguing with Dan, and found himself clicking through years’ worth of video files to find the first video he’d made on Valentine’s Day.

Dan shrugs. “I’ll take that. The question is, how do we come out on Valentine’s Day in the least obnoxious way possible?”

Phil looks down at Dan. His hair has curled, probably from the dusting of snow outside. His face is still a little pink from the cold and his lips are ragged, a mess dry and shiny new skin. He’s changed his earring from the gold one he’d been wearing earlier in the week to the matte rose gold one Phil had bought him on a whim.

“You’ve been thinking about this all week,” Phil accuses. “You probably have plans written down.”

Dan shrugs, unrepentant. “I never thought we’d be making a coming out video. I had to get a bunch of ideas together.”

Phil pauses his game and puts the controller down. “Go get your notebook then, let’s figure this out.”

\--

Phil has lots of feelings about the video. The Video. Dan swears all the time that he doesn’t blame Phil, that he knows it was never supposed to get out, that he appreciates the thought and only wishes it hadn’t caused them so much trouble. That’s probably the truth now. It wasn’t the truth a few years ago. The video got out and Dan had gone into crisis control mode, silent and furious with everyone, including Phil. They hadn’t fought about the video properly. They fought about boundaries and the trajectories of future careers and _that fucking video_ slipped into every conversation, Dan hissing the words like a curse.

And that wasn’t the issue. Phil understood Dan’s anger and disbelief at their half-kept secret coming out. He understood the furious scramble to think of a reason, any reason, why the video was fake.

The issue was the tickle of hope Phil had felt. The quiet whisper of _what if we just tell the truth_   that slid along his thoughts as he apologized to Dan for a glitch that wasn’t even his fault. It’s the hope that turned to resentment somewhere down the line, had turned into the _so we’re just never telling anyone_ that dripped, poisonous, out of his mouth very, very occasionally. It was the ice settling in his stomach every time someone drifted too close to asking them about their relationship directly, the _no, we’re just friends_.

So this video, this second attempt, wasn’t as much about Dan as he told himself it was. It was about digging the lingering anger out of the crevices of his chest where they hid, souring the way he felt about Dan’s Valentine’s Day video plans, urging him to shake off the disbelief that they were finally going to tell the truth.

He brings all of this to his second attempt at the video.

Dan’s out again, gone to harass Louise and maybe manage to film a collaboration.

“Hi, Dan,” he says and clears his throat. It’s strange, looking into the camera and not putting on his filming voice.

“Hi, Dan,” he says again, soft and fond. “I tried this once, and it came out pretty good, but got a little, ah, awkward later. So, I thought you deserved another go.”

\--

“What do you think of this?” Dan asks.

Phil looks up from the skillet where he’s stirring their stir-fry. Dan’s been leaning against their kitchen counter, quiet, for the last couple of minutes. Before that, he’d offered Phil four different video ideas, all shot down.

(“Dan,” Phil said flatly. “We’re not taste testing lube.”

“Ugh, fine.” Dan said. “That one was a joke anyway.”

It definitely wasn’t a joke.)

Phil’s expecting Dan to hold out his notebook with another set of ideas. Instead, he’s holding out his phone. He’s been going through a green nail polish phase lately, today’s is a deep, deep forest green that’s starting to chip around the nailbeds. Phil grabs the phone and looks at the page. It’s a collection of thick engagement rings, ranging from simple to hilariously ornate. They’re all very Dan.

Phil raises an eyebrow. “Are you seriously proposing to me by handing me your phone?”

“No,” Dan scoffs. Phil chooses to believe his stomach dropping was relief and not disappointment.

“You’re proposing to me, obviously. I’m just trying to pick out which ring you should buy.” Dan sounds amused and a little annoyed, as if Phil should have immediately caught on. Phil turns back to the stove to turn the heat down, and steps closer, getting into Dan’s space.

“Are you proposing to me in the brattiest, most princess way possible?” Phil’s voice is a little shaky with laughter. He loves this spoiled, ridiculous human so much.

“No,” Dan repeats. “Because I’m not proposing to you. I was the one who asked you to be my boyfriend, it’s your turn to--”

“Shut up,” Phil laughs and kisses the rest of Dan’s words away.

\--

He watches the video with the volume low and his finger ready to click away to another screen. Dan’s upstairs in the office, writing for a video, having declared that he can’t write with Phil in the room.

Phil had shrugged and insisted he was comfortable and Dan opted to move with a mild huff. Phil was monitoring Dan’s video writing frustration, preparing to step in the moment it looked like Dan’s irritation was going to tip over into genuine bad feelings.

Now, though, now he’s watching the first video.

For a long time, it had hurt to watch the video. Until Australia, when Dan, scrubbed pink and soft voiced, had kissed him and slipped a “yet” onto his assurance that they weren’t coming out.

Phil’s past self seems so young, and more genuine than he ever sees himself in videos these days. Phil’s not the most emotive on his best days, happy to let Dan’s larger than life reactions speak for the both of them.

So it hurt, to watch himself tell Dan how nervous he was the first time they met, how glad he was Dan was the brave one (again) and kissed him, knowing that this is the same video that caused both of them so much stress once.

He has to stop the video the first time his past self smiles, unselfconscious and unplanned. He looks so young, and he’s so in love it hurts Phil’s chest to look at himself smiling. It’s almost shocking, how open his face is, how obvious. It’s no wonder Dan went on a mild rampage to separate them from this video. Phil wants to protect the guy in this video, wants to tell him that it’s alright, it’s wonderful how in love he is but to tuck it close to himself, don’t let anyone else in.

He rubs his sternum, and glances at the staircase. He considers going and getting Dan now, wrapping himself around him, kissing him just because Phil loves him so much.

Instead, he hits play, biting his lip and ignoring the squeeze of embarrassment and protectiveness. He wonders, though, if he can muster up the same type of vulnerability for the video he’s been trying to make the last few days.

\--

“It’s possible I’ve been overthinking this,” Dan tells him, a week before Valentine’s Day, walking into Phil’s room. Phil minimizes the word doc he’d had open and widens his eyes, making a shocked face.

“Fuck off,” Dan says, climbing into the bed, shoving Phil out of the middle. “I’m an artist. It’s in my nature to strive for greatness.”

Phil rolls his eyes, “Ok Mr. Artist. What’ve you got this time?”

“Chubby bunny,” Dan offers, spreading his limbs across the bed and Phil’s legs. Dan’s version of cuddling tends toward the using other people as extensions of the furniture side of the spectrum. “Peeps make Valentine’s Day lovehearts.”

“We’re going to shove our mouths full of marshmallows and go ‘surprise, we’ve been together for eight years’?” Phil asks, not entirely opposed to the idea. “They might not understand what we’re saying. Are we going to bring notations back?”

Dan cackles, rolling around in the bed a little. “We’d die. We’d choke and die and someone would find us once the apartment starts smelling and they’d upload the raw footage and everyone would hear the inevitable big mouth, cocksucking joke you’re going to make.”

Phil scoffs. “I’m a precious angel bean. I’d never.”

“You’re a dirty fucker that appreciates my large mouth is what you are,” Dan sits up. “What do you think? Chubby bunny?”

“Chubby bunny,” Phil confirms. “Minimal cocksucking jokes.”

“No, no,” Dan says, nudging Phil’s knee with his heel. “By all means, make as many of those as you’d like.”

“So, it’s going on your channel?” Phil asks, already googling valentine’s day decorations. “Mine? Not the gaming channel.”

“Definitely mine,” Dan says, stretching. Phil’s eyes catch on his exposed belly. He reaches out and strokes the skin. Dan makes a happily little noise and scoots closer. “Can’t make jokes about sucking dick on AmazingAngelBean.”

“You can,” Phil argues, slipping his hand up Dan’s jumper. “You just have to be subtle about it. Coy.”

Dan, who probably couldn’t spell coy without turning it into a sex joke, laughs and curls into Phil’s touch.

\--

Phil finishes his video at 3am two days before Valentine’s Day, saves it on his desktop as v-day proj, backs it up in three different places. He watches it four more times, considers edits he could make, but leaves it.

He goes to his room, finds Dan’s decided to sleep in his bed tonight. One of Dan’s soft pink jumpers is on the floor beside the bed and Phil’s pretty sure Dan’s stolen his pajamas again. He slides under the covers and Dan wakes a little and reaches for him. Though Dan sleeps in Phil’s bed more often than not these days, it’s a rare occasion for him to want to touch Phil while he’s sleeping. Phil counts this as a Valentine’s Day miracle and gathers Dan up against his front, dropping kisses onto the back of Dan’s neck.

“Y’trying to start something?” Dan slurs sleepily, wiggling his ass against Phil’s crotch.

“Trying to start sleeping,” Phil says. Dan’s skin is soft his hands and warm with sleep. Phil runs a hand along Dan’s side and smiles a little.

“Good,” Dan says, settling, then falling back asleep. Phil thinks of his videos, the one waiting to be published and the one that’s been out in the world for years. He falls asleep, calm.

\--

Filming the chubby bunny video (“Lovey bunny!” Dan shouts as they unpack Amazon boxes full of decorations. Phil vetoes immediately.) is easy. They start in the afternoon, after decorating Phil’s room in the ridiculous spray of Valentine’s Day themed decorations they’ve gotten—heart shaped balloons, pink and red streamers, even a few handmade glitter hearts. Dan’s dressed up a little, breaking out the choker he’d gotten at TATINOF and even painting his nails an obnoxious neon pink and black.

Phil gets the job of explaining the game while Dan drops in cheeky comments about how long they’ve been together and some truly lascivious winks. Phil makes it exactly six sentences before he mentions the size of Dan’s mouth. Dan plays the heart pendant of his choker, squeezes the anatomically correct heart pillow they’d bought, gently shoves Phil a few times. Dan’s giving off nervous, but not unhappy, energy, so Phil rests a hand on his bouncing knee and keeps going.

Half an hour later, Phil’s torn between genuine affection and genuine worry. Dan’s managed to get 9 marshmallows in his mouth and is trying for a tenth. He also appears to be attempting to declare his love.

“Dan,” Phil says, holding the box of peeps out of Dan’s reach.

“Buf hil,” Dan says. He’s frothing red at the mouth a little. Phil’s charmed despite how disgusting it is. “h uh oo. Gih ur an a huh.”

“I love you too, sweetheart, but you’re not getting another.” Phil throws the bag to the other side of the room as Dan reaches around him. Dan rolls his eyes and settles back, arms crossed.

“What was that, 9? You win! Dan?” Phil says, cheering a little. Dan, mouth still full, leans closer.

Phil yells a little and jumps out of the way as the wet, half chewed mess of heart-shaped peeps starts slowly falling out of Dan’s mouth. Dan leans out of frame, laughing, to spit into the bucket they’d set up just in case.

“You’re the worst!” Phil says, from the other side of his bed.

Dan cackles all through the reminder to like and subscribe.

-

It only takes a couple of hours to edit the video. Phil leaves the bulk of it to Dan, who’s better at tamping down the instinct to edit out all the suggestive moments between them. He’ll probably also leave all the blowjob jokes in, just to prove to their audience that Phil’s just as evil as he’s been telling them for years.

Phil’s not surprised when Dan pokes his head into Phil’s room, says, “I think I’m going to sleep in my room tonight.”

Dan’s need for space intensifies when he’s nervous. Phil’s only surprised Dan hadn’t come to tell him sooner. He pushes his laptop off his lap and holds his arms out, inviting Dan for a cuddle.

Dan comes easily, which is a relief, tucking his head into Phil’s neck.

“You’re still sure?” Phil asks, because he has to know. He wouldn’t fault Dan for coming this far and changing his mind. They’re about to change the way their whole world looks, after carefully building lines and boundaries for so many years.

“Yeah,” Dan says immediately. “It’s a good video. It’s just…a big deal.”

Dan’s been treating it casually since Australia, but Phil knows him, knows the way he holds things that scare him at a distance. He strokes Dan’s back, waits for him to continue.

“The pink thing, the boring gender stuff, that’s easy. I’m not all that masculine. I never said I was. We said we weren’t together. We lied, Phil.”

Ah. Phil’s been wondering if that would come up. Dan’s sense of justice and fairness is strong, even as he recognizes the fundamental lack of it in the world.

“We were scared and young. _You_ were young,” Phil says fiercely. He and Dan have certainly made mistakes over the years, but he won’t let Dan beat himself up over an honest attempt at protecting themselves. “And we’re telling the truth now.”

Dan nods and sighs. Phil knows that he won’t absolve himself tonight. He knows that Dan will find the comments calling them liars and worse and he’s going to fixate on them. He knows that for all that they’ve come at this with jokes and an honestly silly video that it’s going to shift their lives. And he’s fine with it.

“Hey,” he says and presses a kiss to Dan’s hair. “Come here.”

Dan lifts his head up and Phil turns to kiss him, deep and slow. Dan’s mouth is hot, he’s always run hot. He makes a soft, pleased sound and reaches one hand up to cup Phil’s head, the other down to slip under his shirt. They make out like that for a while, wrapped around each other, breathing in the same air. Eventually, they drift toward soft pecks and petting each other.

“Are you proposing tomorrow?” Dan asks, dropping a few more kisses along Phil’s neck. Phil could probably this into sex, distract Dan and tire him out so he’d stay in Phil’s bed.

Instead, Phil huffs a laugh. “No. Soon though. Before your birthday.”

Dan hums, a pleased noise and untangles himself from Phil’s body. “Good. As long as you have a plan. Goodnight.”

“Brat,” Phil says fondly. “Goodnight.”

Dan kisses him one more time, a sweet goodnight kiss that leaves Phil smiling.

Phil grabs his laptop from where he’d pushed it when Dan came in, looks at the fully processed private youtube video in one window, the prewritten tweets in the other. Even if Dan was nervous, Phil felt more sure than he had in years.

\--

The video processes in a few minutes the morning of Valentine’s Day. Dan tweets a few emojis to be an asshole: a smiley face, then a heart, then the two men holding hands. Neither of them have phone notifications for twitter on, but when Phil glances at Dan’s phone he can see the absurd number of @s he’s received.

 “You’re a tease,” he tells Dan over breakfast. Dan smiles back at him cheekily. He looks well rested and if he still has the nerves of last night, he’s hiding them well.

Dan sends one more emoji, the blue loveheart, and they turn their phones off. They’ve agreed to publish the video then have their Valentine’s Day, quiet and cut off from the world. It was Dan’s idea.

At noon their time, Dan hands Phil his computer. The video is up, just waiting for someone to hit the publish button.

Dan looks at Phil seriously and opens his mouth. Phil hits the button before he can launch into a speech and smiles back, equally cheeky.

Dan rolls his eyes and sets the computer down on the dining room table. “You know I hate it when you do that.”

“Cut you off before you can talk yourself out of things?” Phil grins. “Yes, that’s why I do it.”

Dan makes a face at him and then grabs his phone, frowning when he realizes its off.

“And now,” Phil says, dragging Dan’s attention away from the dark screen of the phone. “I’m going to go to the bathroom and wash my hands. I might also stop by my bedroom. Plenty of time for someone to turn their phone on and look at their audience’s response to certain videos.”

Dan flips the hood of the Totoro onesie up over his head and waves Phil off, finger already on the phone’s power button.

Phil laughs, fond and heads down the hall. As soon as he passes through the threshold of his room, nerves drop heavy in the bottom of his stomach. He swallows against the anxious nausea and grabs his laptop, sitting on the bed.

His twitter notifications are some ridiculous number that he doesn’t really notice. He can guess all the exclamation marks and mixtures of people crowing that they _knew_ and questions about how he and Dan kept their relationship a secret for so long.

Instead, he copy and pastes the tweet he’d chosen out of twenty or thirty discarded ones into the status box. He pulls up youtube, switches his video from private to public, then tweets. He waits.

“Phil,” Dan’s voice floats down the hall. “Why did I just get a notification that Lessamazingphil uploaded?”

Phil grins and heads to the lounge.

“Happy Valentine’s Day?” He says to Dan’s confused face. He sits on the couch, pulling his legs up to sit crosslegged. “Watch it together?”

“What are you up to, you sneaky bastard?” Dan looks between him and the video. “You’re not proposing to me via public video are you? Because it has some merits, but it’s a bit much to do to the fanbase all at once.”

Phil covers Dan’s mouth with his hand. “Dan. Play the damn video.”

Dan licks his palm, like Phil knew he would, and turns so they can both look down at Dan’s phone.

“Hey Dan,” Video Phil says, waving a little. Dan gasps, recognition immediate. Phil tries not to squirm with nerves. “I tried this once, and it came out pretty good, but got a little, ah, awkward later. So, I thought you deserved another go.”

Dan pauses the video and looks at Phil. His eyes are wet and his grin is huge. “You didn’t.”

“Hit play!” Phil says. “I want to know what happens next!”

Dan laughs and shakes his head, turning back to the video.

“Last time,” Video Phil pauses and looks off camera. Phil remembers the discomfort of keeping himself genuine on camera instead of reverting to his video self. “Last time I did this, we were trying to keep our relationship a secret. Not because we were ashamed, or scared, but because it was new and we were trying to figure out how to be ourselves and do what we loved—making videos. We’re not new now, and not a secret, and we’ve got too many memories for me to mention, or draw.”

Both Phils laugh. He’d thought about drawing a few illustrations before discarding the idea. Dan would have gotten a kick out of the call back, but he didn’t have the extended privacy to mess up draw and re-draw moments of their lives and he did want to risk this video being taken less seriously.

“So, I just want to say that you still make me nervous. You still make my heart flip over. And I’m still so, so happy you were brave and kissed me first. The tour, the book, the show, everything we’ve done together has made me the happiest human on the planet.” Phil in the video looks directly into the camera, and his smile comes, unbidden and unexpected. Dan’s biting his knuckle and grinning.

 “I’m not sorry the world knows how I feel about you, even if I wish that old video got out a different way. I love you a lot, Dan. And I look forward to loving you for a long, long time.”

Video Phil looks into the camera one last time, mischievous and curls his hands into a heart, going “Arf.”

Dan shrieks and nearly throws the phone, like Phil knew he would.

“Oh, my god,” Dan says. He’s laughing and crying a little and Phil loves him like nothing else in this world. “You actually said arf. The furry branding will never die.”

Phil waits for Dan to calm down.

When he does he turns to Phil and says simply, “I love you, you sneaky bastard.”

Phil laughs and pulls Dan into his arms. “You made it really difficult to film. Always buzzing around, wanting to know what I’m doing.”

“Ohhh, poor Phil,” Dan mocks, grin firmly attached. “Oh, I have to sneak around to say incredibly sweet things on a public forum to my partner, ohhh.”

“Shut up,” Phil says laughing.

Dan kisses him, their smiles clacking together.

“I was worried,” Phil tells Dan after they’ve made out for a few minutes and found themselves laying on the couch. “That you’d be mad. That it’d bring up bad memories.”

Dan shrugs. “I’m only a little miffed that you’re stealing shine from the work of art that is Lovey Bunnies. But. No.” He looks up at Phil, resting his chest on Phil’s abdomen. “I know…I know things were rough. When the first video came out. I know I said some shitty things. But I’m glad. This is better.”

Phil nods and looks up at the ceiling, warm and comfortable under Dan’s weight. This is better.

**Author's Note:**

> *trips over first rule of fight club, oops* 
> 
> Title is from LOVE by Nate King Cole. This is, as always, fake.  
> Special thanks to cosmogeny for helping me talk through parts of this fic. Thanks to every single one of you that left a comment or kudos on any of the fics I’ve written this series. This started out as an activity for self-care and all of y’all had a part in brightening the last two weeks for me.


End file.
